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Comment by roegerle | Hacker News Reader

Are they a covered entity?

While I agree that they probably aren't, their intended customer base is.

And even so, nothing precludes people from pursuing civil damages if there's a data breach - this is far more likely with sensitive data coming from a medical provider to a third party.

And as has been hinted at, the lack of professional presentation is going to hurt a lot, and people will immediately ask "can I trust this platform with any of my information?"

Probably not even a data breach. A user's friend/relative who is a lawyer or works in health care or know someone who does will see the app and inmediately begin proceedings for a lawsuit. Once it is under the eye of the state, OP will be in big legal trouble. Building apps is cool but any app that uses critical stuff like real world infrastructure or personal data needs careful treading

> A user's friend/relative who is a lawyer or works in health care or know someone who does will see the app and inmediately begin proceedings for a lawsuit

Why? What's in it for them?

I'm not saying this can't happen, I'm just not sure I understand why you think it's so likely to happen.

Damages? The potential payout is enormous.

Yeah but, how can there be damages without a breach?

Kate is a citizen. She is 60 years old and the family lives away. She gets visited daily by a care worker. Kate downloads the app and enters her data. Kate shares her data with the care worker so it can be managed for things like appointments and medication. The manager of the care worker sees the app, checks that the site has no policy whatsoever. Shares the name of the app with the law department. Law department contacts the local health authority regarding the app legality. The local health authority begins proceedings against the developer. Developer loses money

That makes sense, and I hope it would work. Still, that's maybe an old view of how software and business work. In truth the app is a whipped-together thing, and the 'company' selling it is a shell. The address is a blind PO box.

Law department visits the box and finds nobody. Shell company changes name (indeed, perhaps they have a different name for every victim) and resume operation immediately. Hell, they never stop selling for a millisecond.

Follow the money? Ha. The modern ideas of currency make such schemes bulletproof.

Domain ownership, cloud accounts, IP addresses. All of these can be used to as a collection of evidence to pinpoint the target. In the old days, it would be harder but nowadays everyone is sheds fingerprint cells the same way leave dead cells with our DNA everywhere

Yeah but how does the "law department" gain money? The question I asked is "what's in it for them?"

An enormous payout from a guy who built an app as a side project? Ok, you could push the guy into bankruptcy, but I doubt that you will ever see an "enormous payout"...

> Kate's App is a tool created to support medical caregivers and the people they care for

Seems like it is intended to be used by covered entities. But it does depend a bit on what "medical caregiver" is intended to mean.

That's not for any of us to determine here. A lawyer can answer that.

I doubt they are.

No.

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